Traditionally, information was disseminated within corporations and other such organizations by paper memorandums, or memos. Changes in human resources (HR) policies, for instance, may have been printed on a sheet a paper. That sheet of paper would then be photocopied a large number of times, and the copies disseminated to all of the employees within the corporation. Such paper distribution of memo copies can be expensive and time-consuming, however, especially when an organization has thousands of employees or more.
More recently, electronic bulletin board systems (BBS's) have become popular as a way to replace traditional manners by which to disseminate information within organizations. BBS's are generally and non-restrictively defined herein as computerized systems that receive and store information posted by users, where users are able to view the information as needed. Thus, users can view changes in HR policies and other information on their computers, so that paper copies of memos no longer have to be circulated.
Electronic BBS's have grown in complexity as their features have increased. For instance, many BBS's allow for checking or verification of posted data, such as spell checking, as well as email notification when changes to the data or replies to the posted data have occurred. Other BBS's may translate data received from users in one format into another format amenable to viewing by a larger number of users. Relevancy management and other features are present in still other BBS's.
As a result, electronic BBS's typically require powerful, but expensive, software for their implementation. Typically, for instance, most electronic BBS's require database management software (DBMS) to manage their data postings, which are referred to herein as BBS items. DBMS is software that controls the organization, storage, retrieval, security and integrity of data in a database. It accepts requests from applications and instructs the operating system to transfer the appropriate data as needed. Examples of software that provide for electronic BBS's in this regard are Lotus® Domino® server software, available from International Business Machines Corp., of Armonk, N.Y., and Microsoft® SharePoint®, available from Microsoft Corp., of Redmond, Wash.
Using such BBS software, however, can be disadvantageous. First, the software is expensive, preventing it from being used by cost-conscious organizations. Second, the software is complex, and therefore may require specially trained administrators to set up and maintain the software. Third, the software may have relatively stringent hardware requirements, such that only relatively powerful server computers, for instance, can be used to run the software. An organization may thus have to upgrade its server computers, which are so-called “backend” systems, in order to run BBS software. For these and other reasons, therefore, there is a need for the present invention.